Tuesday, 6 May 2014

Ferrari factory visit part of a tour to Italy nothing else

(Mercedes AMG F1 Team)

Former Mercedes F1 team principal Ross Brawn has played down the significance of trip to the Ferrari F1 factory.

Brawn, who resigned from his role as Mercedes team boss in December of last year and later announced his decision to retire from Formula One to spend more time with his family, fishing and watching Manchester United play visited the Ferrari factory on Monday with a group of friend's as part of a tour of Italy.

His visit to Ferrari comes following the departure from the Italian team of team principal Stefano Domenicali who has been replaced by Ferrari North America's CEO Marco Mattiacci who oversaw Fernando Alonso collect the tams first podium of the season last time out in China in his first race weekend as team boss. It has emerged that prior to taking up his new role at the team Mattiacci 'shadowed' Domenicali at the factory before making the trip to the Chinese Grand Prix.

As for Brawn, who had been linked with the top job at Ferrari following Domenicali's exit has no plans to return to the sport. Brawn was technical director at Ferrari during Michael Schumacher's dominant period with the Italian team from 2000-2004 and the pair worked together at Benetton when Schumacher first won the championship in 94 and 95.

Speaking to the Gazzetta Dello Sport Brawn said that his trip to Ferrari was out in the open and that the main purpose of the visit was to drive the Italian manufacturer's new hyper-car the LaFerrari along with a number of other Ferrari road cars around their Fiorano test track.